The full text of Indian
Origins, including a 41-page annotated bibliography of
pre-1830 sources
dealing with the origin, history, and antiquities of the New World Indians is available in
New Mormon
Studies CD-ROM: A Comprehensive Resource Library (Salt Lake City: Smith Research
Associates,
1998), which is distributed by Signature
Books, Salt Lake City. The web
version of Indian Origins appears here by permission. Since publication by Signature
Books in 1986,
Indian Origins has received little response from Mormon apologists. Accompanying
this version of Indian Origins is my reply to Kevin
Christensen's 1990 review, which appeared in Review of Books on the Book of
Mormon.

The Book of Mormon presents
a number of challenges for serious readers. I have tried to face
these
squarely in writing this book. Much of what has been written previously was engendered in the
crossfire of a debate motivated by reactions to a religion whose foundation rests firmly on the
merits
of the Book of Mormon. Most members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints,
commonly known as Mormons, and other groups tracing their origins to Joseph Smith, believe
that
the Book of Mormon is a literal history of the inhabitants of the ancient Americas. Joseph Smith,
founder and first prophet of the Mormon church, claimed to have translated the book in the late
1820s from a set of golden plates he found buried in a hill near his home in upstate New York.
Thus
few careful readers can escape questions about historicity. For example, can the Book of Mormon
be substantiated as an actual history of native Americans? Historical issues are of course further
compounded by the lack of a tangible record. Joseph said he returned the plates to the angel or
spirit
who first gave him charge of them after he had finished his translation.

From the beginning many
readers of the Book of Mormon doubted such claims. To them the
book
seemed squarely rooted in the nineteenth century. The famous Reformed Baptist preacher
Alexander
Campbell, for example, charged in 1831 that Joseph Smith had brought together in the Book of
Mormon "every error and almost every truth discussed in New York for the last ten years."(1) In 1834
the Boston-based Unitarian magazine echoed Campbell's analysis, claiming that the Book of
Mormon
"is with some art adapted to the known prejudices of a portion of the community."(2)

However, with the publication
of E. D. Howe's anti-Mormon expose Mormonism
Unvailed in 1834,
the discussion narrowed to the theory that Smith and an accomplice, usually Sidney Rigdon, had
purloined an unpublished manuscript written by Solomon Spalding, who had died in 1816. The
theory
of a stolen manuscript appealed to those who assumed Smith was too ignorant to have written the
book.(3)

The Spalding theory, which still
has its advocates, dominated Mormon and anti-Mormon
literature
until I. Woodbridge Riley questioned it in his 1902 book, The Founder of Mormonism: A
Psychological Study of Joseph Smith, Jr. Riley, in effect, went back to exploring the kinds
of parallels
Campbell had suggested between the nineteenth-century environment and the text of the Book of
Mormon, demonstrating a dependence on a more modern world view but not direct borrowings
from
any other text. The subject was picked up forty years later by Fawn M. Brodie in No Man
Knows My
History: The Life of Joseph Smith. She delivered the fatal blow to the Spalding theory and
followed
Riley's environmental approach to the Book of Mormon. Since both Riley and Brodie were
writing
biographies of Joseph Smith, neither explored the Book of Mormon itself in great depth. Some
important aspects were missed entirely.

Inspired by Riley and Brodie,
others, usually anti-Mormons, have tried to expand and explore
evidence which the former writers were only able to treat superficially. James D. Bales's
The Book
of Mormon? (1958) and especially Jerald and Sandra Tanner's Mormonism: Shadow
or Reality?
(1982 revised version) include information not found in Riley or Brodie. However, because of the
polemic, one-sided nature of these and similar works, Mormon readers have tended to dismiss
their
contents as biased and cursory.

Other, less stilted, works have
been more concerned with trying to understand and make
sense of the
Book of Mormon. Gustav H. Blanke's "Early Theories About the Nature and Origin of the
Indians,
and the Advent of Mormonism," Amerikastudien 25 (1980), 243-68, Susan Curtis
Mernitz's "Palmyra
Revisited: A Look at Early Nineteenth-Century America and the Book of Mormon," The
John
Whitmer Historical Association Journal 2 (1982): 30-37,(4) and Mark Thomas's "Revival Language
in the Book of Mormon," Sunstone 8 (May-June 1983): 19-25, are examples of
essays that have
sought to enlarge the scope of approach.

These and other works suggest
that the literature of pre-1830 America may hold at least part
of the
key to understanding more fully the Book of Mormon. In other words, historical criticism, which
assumes that a work is never intelligible in isolation and must be explored against the intellectual
and
cultural backdrop of the period during which it appeared, may be a profitable tool for Book of
Mormon students. An essential task of historical criticism is to explore various expressions of a
particular idea or complex of concerns which appeared prior to or were contemporaneous with
the
work in question. Such an exploration may not demonstrate direct cause-and-effect relationships
but
will certainly narrow the field of hypothesis and deduction.

Since the early 1900s, mostly
due to the efforts of Mormon scholar and church authority B.
H.
Roberts, scholars have been increasingly aware of the influence of Joseph Smith's environment on
the
Book of Mormon. Anachronisms regarding the Book of Mormon's use of biblical material
prompted
Mormon scholars to reject the nineteenth-century notion that Joseph Smith produced from the
plates
a "literal" translation. Instead they have advanced the idea that the concepts flowed through
Joseph's
mind and that he was left to express those concepts in the best language that he could command.
Since Joseph, like many in his culture, was familiar with the Bible, Roberts suggested that it was
only
natural for him to use biblical phraseology in his translation.(5) Thus those who view Joseph as the
Book of Mormon's translator have shifted their position from a purely mechanical or literal
translation
to one which includes Joseph and his environment. Recently Mormon scholar Blake T. Ostler
expanded this view to include other early nineteenth-century elements, including Joseph's own
inspired additions to the text.(6)

In my own study of the Book
of Mormon I have not been primarily concerned with
discovering the
"sources" of Joseph Smith's thought. Nor have I been interested in tracing links between Joseph
Smith
and those books he may have read or been exposed to. Rather I have chosen to shift the emphasis
of
the discussion somewhat, to outline the broad contours of public discussion about the ancient
inhabitants of America which had taken place or was taking place by 1830 when the Book of
Mormon first appeared. What was the focus and thrust of that discussion? What complex of
questions
and problems motivated and concerned Joseph Smith's contemporaries? What kinds of responses
were displayed by the books and articles written at the time? Finally, I have tried to determine the
extent to which the Book of Mormon may have been part of that discussion.

The Book of Mormon itself, I
would assert, licenses my approach because it claims to address
its
modern readers and their problems. As Nephi, a prophet who appears in the early chapters, says,
"I
know that they [i.e., his prophecies of the future] shall be of great worth unto them in the last
days;
for in that day shall they understand them" (2 Ne. 25:8). Most early American Freemasons could
have
guessed, for example, that the Book of Mormon was describing them when they read its
condemnation of latter-day "secret combinations" (2 Ne. 26:22; Eth. 8:23-26).(7) Catholics may have
winced when they read the Book of Mormon's typically Protestant description of the "great and
abominable church ... the whore of all the earth" (1 Ne. 13 and 14).(8) And Universalists must have
recognized their own beliefs in the "false and vain and foolish doctrines" of those teaching that
"God
will beat us with a few stripes, and at last we shall be saved in the kingdom of God" (2 Ne.
28:8).(9)

The Book of Mormon invites
even more radical comparisons, however. For example, the
prophet
Moroni refrains from describing the oaths of the Jaredite and Lamanite secret societies because
"they
are had among all people" (Eth. 8:20). He then warns his latter-day American audience:

Wherefore, O ye Gentiles, it is wisdom in God that these things should be
shown unto you,
that
thereby ye may repent of your sins, and suffer not that these murderous combinations shall get
above
you. ... Wherefore, the Lord commandeth you, when ye shall see these things come among you
that
ye shall awake to a sense of your awful situation. ... Wherefore, I, Moroni, am commanded to
write
these things that evil may be done away. (Eth. 8:23-26)

Moroni is mandating a more
fundamental comparison between latter-day and ancient groups
than
Nephi does when he predicts modern secret societies. Other topics are treated similarly. Nephi
foresaw latter-day Universalists, and among the Nephites themselves were those who believed
that
"all mankind should be saved at the last day" (Al. 1:4). Alma's words to his son Corianton, a
believer
in universal salvation, must have resonated for early nineteenth-century Christians caught in the
emotional debate between orthodoxy and Universalism (Al. 39-42).

My approach takes seriously
this Book of Mormon imperative to compare discussions within
the
book to those taking place when the book first appeared. Making sense of the ongoing religious
controversies in both Book of Mormon and nineteenth-century American contexts requires an
exploration of the terms in which questions generating the debates were phrased. The same
statement
may have different meanings when considered within dissimilar environments.

Let me explore an example
which will help to clarify this important point. Jonathan Swift
mentioned
the two moons of Mars in his 1726 Gulliver's Travels. At that time the moons were not visible by
any
means available. But in 1877 the American astronomer Asaph Hall looking through his new,
powerful
telescope, saw the two moons of Mars as Swift had predicted. Modern readers of Swift have
since
wondered how he could have made this prediction. Some have even argued that he was divinely
inspired. The majority of scientists, however, have maintained that the prediction was only a "very
happy guess." Researching the issue more carefully, however, historians Marjorie Nicolson and
Nora
Mohler discovered that Swift was in fact transmitting an early eighteenth-century notion.(10) Indeed,
Kepler and Voltaire had also mentioned the two moons of Mars. On what basis were such
conclusions drawn? As it turns out, this belief followed from the supposition that the planets
furthest
from the sun had the most satellites. Since earth was known to have one satellite, Jupiter,
according
to Galileo, had four, and Cassini said Saturn had five, it was natural for Swift and others to
choose
two satellites for Mars--the next highest number for the next planet out from the earth.(11) Knowing
the cultural background of the discussion is thus useful in interpreting the significance of Swift's
statement. He was neither prescient nor scientifically precocious but had arrived at what turned
out
to be a correct conclusion based not on science or direct observation but on an early concept of
an
ordered universe. Still, he could just as easily have been wrong.

A central question to ask about
Joseph Smith and the Book of Mormon is: How did this book
fit into
the ongoing discussion about the origin and nature of ancient American cultures? The discovery
of
the New World had inspired a whole series of questions and debates. At what time and from what
nation did the Indians originate? How and over what route did they travel to the Americas? How
did
they receive their skin color? Who were the builders of the many mounds and ruined buildings
which
the early colonists found? These and related questions were variously answered and hotly debated
for three centuries prior to the publication of the Book of Mormon.

Archaeology, anthropology,
linguistics, and other disciplines were still in their infancy at the
time, and
scientific answers were yet on the horizon. Although a majority of the early writers came close to
modern thinking on several points regarding Indian origins, they did not arrive at their ideas
through
scientific investigation but rather through philosophical speculation. Some correctly guessed that
the
Indians had migrated across the Bering Strait and were biologically related to the Tartars or
Mongolians of eastern Asia. Such conjectures were based on the observation that the Bering
Strait
was the point at which the Old and New Worlds were closest and that the Indians seemed to
resemble
some Asiatics. But, like Swift, they could just as easily have guessed wrong.

In fact a significant minority of
religiously motivated people proposed other explanations. For
them
the subject of Indian origins was a theological conundrum. The very discovery of the New World
and
its inhabitants touched off a theological debate of no small significance.(12) Who were these Indians?
Did they have souls? Were they men and thus descendants of Adam? What was Christian Europe's
obligation to them? Were they to be civilized first, or Christianized? Could Christians morally
justify
seizing Indian lands? These were among the various concerns of Joseph Smith's contemporaries.

In this context Smith's 1842
letter to John Wentworth, editor of the Chicago Democrat, is not
particularly foreign or unusual. Each of the elements of the letter, as I hope to show--for example,
the possible Israelite origin of the Indians, the possible influence of Judaism or even Christianity in
ancient America--had been discussed in some form during the ongoing debate. In other words, the
compelling questions for Joseph's contemporaries were very similar to those addressed by the
Book
of Mormon, as outlined to Wentworth:

In this important and interesting book the history of ancient America is
unfolded, from its first
settlement by a colony that came from the tower of Babel, at the confusion of languages[,] to the
beginning of the fifth century of the Christian era. We are informed by these records that America
in
ancient times has been inhabited by two distinct races of people. The first were called Jaredites
and
came directly from the tower of Babel. The second race came directly from the city of Jerusalem,
about six hundred years before Christ. They were principally Israelites, of the descendants of
Joseph.
The Jaredites were destroyed about the time that the Israelites came from Jerusalem, who
succeeded
them in the inheritance of the country. The principal nation of the second race fell in battle
towards
the close of the fourth century. The remnant are the Indians that now inhabit this country. This
book
also tells us that our Savior made his appearance upon this continent after his resurrection, that he
planted the gospel here in all its fulness, and richness, and power, and blessing; that they had
apostles,
prophets, pastors, teachers, and evangelists; the same order, the same priesthood, the same
ordinances, gifts, powers, and blessing, as was enjoyed on the eastern continent, that the people
were
cut off in consequence of their transgressions, that the last of their prophets who existed among
them
was commanded to write an abridgement of their prophesies, history &c., and to hide it up in
the
earth, and that it should come forth and be united with the Bible for the accomplishment of the
purposes of God in the last days.(13)

One further theoretical issue
dictated by the discussion in Joseph Smith's day should be
mentioned
here: only a few early nineteenth-century writers suggested multiple origins for the American
Indians.
The very term "Indian," as Robert F. Berkhofer, Jr., has pointed out, embodied a unitary concept
of
the native inhabitants of the Americas invented by Europeans. "By classifying all these many
peoples
as Indians," writes Berkhofer, "whites categorized the variety of cultures and societies as a single
entity for the purposes of description and analysis, thereby neglecting or playing down the social
and
cultural diversity of Native Americans then--and now--for the convenience of simplified
understanding."(14) Samuel Williams expressed in
1794 a typical view when he wrote that "the Indians
... every where appeared to be the same race, or kind of people."(15) My own discussion of the "Indian"
thus ignores the multiplicity of ethnic groups, languages, and lifestyles because most discussions
in
the nineteenth century and earlier ignored such distinctions. I have tried to note in the following
analysis points at which modern knowledge about native Americans differs from misconceptions
displayed in the writings of earlier observers. However, readers would do well to keep in mind
that
I am describing what nineteenth-century Americans thought about the Indians.

The above considerations have
shaped the process by which I have weighed and selected the
available
sources. For the most part I have explored two broad categories of writings: books motivated by
theological issues--as is obviously the case with Ethan Smith's View of the Hebrews
(1823 and
1825)(16)--and those motivated by concerns more
antiquarian than religious--such as John Yates's and
Joseph Moulton's History of the State of New York (1824). I have looked in these
sources for
arguments, stories, and questions which persisted over time and were thus picked up and
repeatedly
reworked. I have also explored those sources which reached a broad audience--books reprinted
again
and again, for example, or excerpted or written about in popular periodicals and newspapers.

I have, of course, tried to
include all sources which would have been available in the area
where
Joseph Smith grew up and later worked. These sources do not prove but merely suggest Joseph's
exposure to the subject. Palmyra, where he grew up, was booming in the 1820s. In 1822 a section
of the Erie Canal was completed between Rochester and Utica. The canal, which ran through the
north end of the village of Palmyra, increased commerce and attracted many people to the area.
Historian Horatio Gates Spafford wrote in 1824 that Palmyra "has long been a place of very
considerable business, and is the third in rank in this [western] Country, and increasing
rapidly."(17)
With a population of nearly 4,000, Palmyra had its own newspaper, the Palmyra Register, from
1817
to 1823, and the Wayne Sentinel thereafter. Palmyra had its own library after 1823, and nearby
Manchester had had one since 1817. Several bookstores in Palmyra and vicinity sold a variety of
publications at reasonable prices.(18)

Books, of course, were not the
only sources of information. Many things can be learned by
word of
mouth, what Mormon historian B. H. Roberts once called the fund of "common knowledge"
inherited
by individuals living in the same cultural setting.(19)
Joseph Smith certainly inherited some of his
attitudes and beliefs about the Indians from his ancestors--many of them leading citizens in New
England's Puritan community and members of the Congregational church. His maternal
grandfather,
Solomon Mack, fought against the Indians in the French and Indian Wars.(20) Moreover, Joseph may
have learned about Indian origin problems through popular channels of information such as circuit
preachers, traveling lecturers, or community talk circulating in the country store, post office, and
other public gathering places.

Working within the context of
these theoretical and practical considerations, I have organized
this
essay as follows. Part 1 presents background material about Joseph Smith and the publication of
the
Book of Mormon. Part 2 documents pre-1830 knowledge of ancient American material
culture--ruined buildings, temples, pyramids, roads, towers, earthen mounds, and fortifications,
for example.
Part 3 explores the various pre-1830 debates about Indian origins in the New World. Finally, Part
4
discusses mound-builder myths and the theory of a lost white-skinned Christian race.

3. In 1834 E. D. Howe, using information from disaffected
Mormon Philastus Hurlbut, claimed that
the Book of Mormon was really a reworking of the Spalding manuscript. Mormonism
Unvailed
(Painesville, Ohio: E. D. Howe, 1834), 278-90. For a discussion of the origin and development of
the
Spalding theory, see Lester E. Bush, Jr., "The Spalding Theory Then and Now," Dialogue:
A Journal
of Mormon Thought 10 (Autumn 1977): 40-69.

5. See the following discussions of the theory that Joseph Smith
conceptually translated the Book
of Mormon: B. H. Roberts, Defense of the Faith and the Saints, 2 vols. (Salt Lake
City: Deseret
News, 1907-12), 1:255-74; Richard Van Wagoner and Steven Walker, "Joseph Smith: `The Gift
of
Seeing,'" Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought 15 (Summer 1982): 49-68.
Edward H. Ashment,
"The Book of Mormon--A Literal Translation?" Sunstone 5 (March-April 1980):
10-14; James E.
Lancaster, "The Method of Translation of the Book of Mormon," The John Whitmer
Historical
Association Journal 3 (1983): 51-61, reprinted in Dan Vogel, ed., The Word of
God: Essays on
Mormon Scripture (Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 1990), 97-112. This theory
contradicts the early
eye-witness accounts which describe the translation process as literal and mechanical.

6. Blake T. Ostler, "The Book of Mormon as a Modern
Expansion of an Ancient Source," Dialogue:
A Journal of Mormon Thought 19 (Fall 1986), 73-76. Although both the
conceptual-translation and
inspired-expansion theories are nothing more than apologia, specifically ad hoc
theories, designed
only for the purpose of protecting a disintegrating hypothesis from adverse evidence, I referred to
them in 1986 to illustrate how apologists were already struggling to accommodate the kind of
information I was about to present in my essay. For a discussion of the ad hoc hypothesis, see
Theodore Schick, Jr., and Lewis Vaughn, How to Think About Weird Things: Critical
Thinking for
a New Age (2nd ed.; Mountain View, California: Mayfield Publishing Co., 1999),
155-165.

7. Among those who have recognized possible anti-masonic
elements in the Book of Mormon are
Fawn M. Brodie, No Man Knows My History: The Life of Joseph Smith (2nd ed.;
New York: Alfred
A. Knopf, 1976), 63-66; Thomas F. O'Dea, The Mormons (Chicago: University of
Chicago Press,
1957), 35; Jerald and Sandra Tanner, Mormonism: Shadow or Reality? (2nd ed.;
Salt Lake City:
Modern Microfilm, 1982), 69-72; Robert N. Hullinger, Mormon Answer to Skepticism,
Why Joseph
Smith Wrote the Book of Mormon (St. Louis: Clayton Publishing House, 1980), 100-119,
reprinted
as Joseph Smith's Response to Skepticism (Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 1992),
99-120; H.
Michael Marquardt, "Early Nineteenth Century Events Reflected in the Book of Mormon,"
Journal
of Pastoral Practice 3/1 (1979): 118-20; John E. Thompson, "Joseph Smith and the
Illuminati:
Masonry and Anti-Masonry in the Burned-over District," unpublished paper, 1980, much of
which
was incorporated in The Masons, the Mormons, and the Morgan Incident (Ames:
Iowa Research
Lodge No. 2, 1984); and Susan Curtis Mernitz, "Early Nineteenth-Century America and the Book
of Mormon," The Word of God: Essays on Mormon Scripture, ed. Dan Vogel (Salt
Lake City:
Signature Books, 1990), 81-96. Richard L. Bushman, Joseph Smith and the Beginnings of
Mormonism (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1984), 128-31, provides an apologetic
response.

8. Among those who have recognized possible anti-Catholic
elements in the Book of Mormon are
Fawn M. Brodie, No Man Knows My History: The Life of Joseph Smith, 2nd ed.,
rev. and enl. (New
York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1976), 59-60; Thomas F. O'Dea, The Mormons (Chicago:
University of
Chicago Press, 1957), 34; and Susan Curtis Mernitz, "Early Nineteenth-Century America and the
Book of Mormon," The Word of God: Essays on Mormon Scripture, ed. Dan
Vogel (Salt Lake City:
Signature Books, 1990), 89-91.

9. This has subsequently received full treatment in Dan Vogel,
"Anti-Universalist Rhetoric in the
Book of Mormon," in New Approaches to the Book of Mormon: Explorations in Critical
Methodology, ed. Brent Lee Metcalfe (Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 1993), 21-52.

10. Marjorie Nicolson and Nora Mohler, "The Scientific
Background of the Voyage to Laputa,"
Annals of Science (1937), as discussed in S. H. Gould, "Gulliver and the Moons of
Mars," Journal
of the History of Ideas 6 (January 1945): 91-101.

11. Marjorie Nicolson and Nora Mohler, "The Scientific
Background of the Voyage to Laputa,"
Annals of Science (1937), as discussed in S. H. Gould, "Gulliver and the Moons of
Mars," Journal
of the History of Ideas 6 (January 1945): 95-96.

12. On the theological significance of America's discovery, see
Lewis Hanke, "The Theological
Significance of the Discovery of America," in Fredi Chiappelli, ed., First Images of
America: The
Impact of the New World on the Old, 2 vols. (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of
California
Press, 1976), 1:363-89; and Gustav H. Blanke's "Early Theories About the Nature and Origin of
the
Indians, and the Advent of Mormonism," Amerikastudien 25 (1980), 243-68.

14. Robert F. Berkhofer, Jr., The White Man's Indian:
Images of the American Indian from
Columbus to the Present (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1978), 3. Berkhofer discusses in
detail the
process by which the Europeans "invented" the Indians and wielded the concept to their own
advantage.

15. Samuel Williams, The Natural and Civil History of
Vermont (Walpole, New Hampshire, 1794),
187. See also Ethan Smith, View of the Hebrews; or, The Tribes of Israel in
America (Poultney,
Vermont, 1825), 88, which quotes Samuel Williams and others describing the Indians as a unitary
group.

16. For a discussion of Ethan Smith's possible influence on the
Book of Mormon as well as a review
of the polemics of that theory, see Robert N. Hullinger, Joseph Smith's Response to
Skepticism (Salt
Lake City: Signature Books, 1992), 183-89. See also George D. Smith, "Book of Mormon
Difficulties," Sunstone 6 (May-June 1981): 45-50; Madison U. Sowell, "The
Comparative Method
Reexamined," Sunstone 6 (May-June 1981): 44, 50-54; and David Persuitte,
Joseph Smith and the
Origins of the Book of Mormon (Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland and Co., 1985).
Persuitte's
book contains valuable material on Ethan Smith but overstates his influence and enters into
unnecessary and tenuous speculations.

17. Horatio Gates Spafford, A Gazetteer of the State of
New York (Albany, New York, 1824), 400-401.

19. B. H. Roberts, Studies of the Book of
Mormon, ed. Brigham D. Madsen (Urbana: University of
Illinois Press, 1985), 153-54. Others who have discussed the Roberts manuscripts include Wesley
P.
Walters, "The Origin of the Book of Mormon," Journal of Pastoral Practice 3/3
(1979): 123-52; and
George D. Smith, "`Is There Any Way to Escape These Difficulties?': The Book of Mormon
Studies
of B. H. Roberts," Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought 17 (Summer 1984):
94-111.